About Mark Mulligan

Vivendi is reported to be proposing to its board a plan for spinning out Universal Music. It is certainly the right time for a spin off (always sell before the peak), but a full divestment would leave Vivendi unbalanced and a shell of its former self. Canal+ is facing the same Netflix-inspired cord-cutting pains as other pay-TV operators (and is relying heavily on sub-Saharan Africa for subscriber growth), while other assets such as those in Vivendi Village have failed to deliver. With CEO Vincent Bolloré having invested heavily in Vivendi, he would be devaluing his own wealth. For a man who is not shy of saying that he’s in the game to make money, this scenario simply doesn’t add up. As one investment specialist recently suggested to me, this talk of a spin-off is probably exactly that, talk. Talk aimed at driving up Vivendi’s valuation by association and, at most, potentially resulting in a partial spin-off or partial listing. However, it is not beyond the realms of possibility that a big enough offer for Universal would persuade Bolloré to sell. So, let’s for a moment assume that Universal is on the market and have a little fun with who could buy it.

The Chinese option

It is widely rumoured that Alibaba was in advanced discussions with Vivendi to buy some size of stake in Universal. Those conversations derailed when the Chinese government tightened up regulations on Chinese companies buying overseas assets, which is why we now see Tencent buying a growing number of minority stakes in companies rather than outright acquisitions. So, an outright Chinese acquisition is likely off the table. This doesn’t rule out other Asian bidders (Softbank had an $8.5 billion bid rejected in 2013), though perhaps Chinese companies are the only ones with the requisite scale and access to cash that would meet a far, far higher 2018 price point.

The tech major option

The most likely scenario (if Universal were for sale) is that one of the tech majors (Apple, Alphabet, Amazon, Facebook) swoops in. Given Google’s long-held antipathy for the traditional copyright regime, Alphabet is not the most likely, while Facebook is too early in its music journey (though check back in 18 months if all goes well). Apple and Amazon are different cases entirely. Both companies are run by teams of older executives whose formative cultural reference points were shaped by traditional media companies. These are companies that, even if they may not state it, see themselves as the natural evolution of media, moving it from the physical era of transactions to the digital era of access. Thus far, Apple and Amazon have focused principally on distribution, although both have invested in rights too. Apple less so, (e.g. Frank Ocean, Chance the Rapper) but Amazon much more so (e.g. Man in the High Castle, Manchester by the Sea). Acquiring a major media company is a logical next step for Amazon. A TV studio and, or network would likely be the first move (especially as Netflix will likely buy one first, forcing Amazon’s hand), but a record label wouldn’t be inconceivable. And it would have to be a big label – such as UMG, that would guarantee enough share of ear to generate ROI. Apple though, could well buy a sports league, which would use up its budget.

The Spotify option

While the tech majors are more likely long-term buyers of Universal, Spotify arguably needs it more (and is certainly less distracted by other media formats). Right now, Spotify has a prisoner’s dilemma; it knows it needs to make disruptive changes to its business model if it is going to create the step change investors clearly want (look at what happened to Spotify’s stock price despite an impressive enough set of Q1 results). But it also knows that making such changes too quickly could result in labels pulling content, which would destroy its present in the hope of building a future. Meanwhile, labels are worried Spotify is going to disintermediate them but can’t risk damaging their business by withdrawing content now – hence the prisoner’s dilemma. Neither side dares make the first move.

That’s the problem with the ‘do a Netflix’ argument: do it too fast and the whole edifice comes tumbling down. Moreover, original content will not be the same silver bullet for Spotify as it was for Netflix. This is mainly because there is a far smaller catalogue of TV content than music, so a dollar spent on original video goes a lot further than a dollar spent on original music. It is not beyond the realm of possibility that Spotify will get to a tipping point, where the labels see a shiny-toothed wolf lurking under the lamb’s wool, and with its cover blown it will be forced to go nuclear. If this happened, buying a major label would become an option. And, as with the tech majors, it would have to be a major label to deliver enough share of ear.

But that scenario is a long, long way off. First, Spotify has to prove it can be successful and generate enough revenue and market cap to put itself in a position where it could buy a major. And that is still far from a clear path. For now, Spotify’s focus is on being a partner to the labels, not a parent company.

All of this talk might sound outlandish but it was not so long ago that an internet company (AOL) co-owned Warner Music and a drinks company (Seagram) owned Universal Music, before selling it to a water utilities company (Vivendi), and, long before that, EMI was owned by a light bulb company (Thorn Electrical Industries). We have got used to this current period of corporate stability for the major record labels, but this situation is a reflection of the recorded music business being in such a poor state that there was little M&A interest. Nonetheless it is all changing, potentially heralding a return to the past. Everything has happened before and will happen again.

Spotify released its first ever quarterly earnings results today. The results reflect strong performance in its first public quarter with growth in subscribers, total users, revenue and also gross profit. Here are the highlights:

Subscribers: Spotify hit 75 million subscribers, up 44% from 71 million in Q4 2017, which is wholly in line with MIDiA’s 74.7 million forecast and reflects solid growth for a non-paid trial quarter. That is an increase of 22.9 million on Q1 2017, at which stage total subscribers stood at 52 million. The fact the year-on-year growth is 44% of the total subscriber count from one year previously reflects just how far Spotify has come in such a short period of time. Q2 2018 will be a paid trial quarter so subscriber growth will be markedly stronger. Expect Q2 2018 subscribers to reach around the 82 million mark.Takeaway: Spotify’s subscriber growth is maintaining its solid organic growth trajectory, with paid trials continuing to be the growth accelerant that keep total growth on a steeper growth curve.

Revenues: Revenues were up 26% from €902 million in Q1 17 to reach €1,139 million, though this was 1% down on Q4 2017. Premium revenue was €1,037 million, comprising 91% of all revenues. Ad Supported revenues were €102m growing at a faster rate (38%) than premium but contributing fewer net new dollars. Labels and publishers have empowered Spotify to fully commercialize its free user base and the dividends are now beginning to manifest, all be it from a low base.Takeaway: Premium revenues continue to be the beating heart of Spotify’s business. Though ad supported represents a massive long term opportunity, that business is going to take much longer to kick into motion. Growth though is not linear and is shaped by seasonal trial cycles.

Churn: Quarterly churn fell below 5% in Q1 2018 (it was 5.1% in Q4 2017), following a long term downward trend that was only interrupted by a 0.4% point increase in Q3 2017. Applying the churn rate to Spotify’s subscriber base reveals that it while its net subscriber additions for Q1 2018 were 4 million, the gross additions (ie including churned out users) was 7.4 million.Takeaway: Any growth stage business that is aggressively pursuing audience growth faces the challenge of bringing a high share of low value users into the acquisition funnel, which in turn keeps churn up. Sooner rather than later Spotify is going to need to start focusing more heavily on retention than acquisition, especially in more mature markets.

Costs and margins: Gross margin was 24.9% in Q1, up from 24.5% in Q4 and 11.7% in Q1 2017. This was above guidance and Spotify attributes this largely to changes in estimates for rights holder costs. Spotify is doing everything it can to highlight just how good a job it is doing of reducing rights costs. ‘Recalculating’ costs for Q1 2018 has the convenient benefit of extending that pre-DPO narrative into its first earnings.Takeaway: Spotify’s Barry McCarthy stated prior to Spotify’s listing was going to remain squarely focused on ‘growth and market share’. So modest progress on margins needs to be set in the context of a company that is focused on growing now while the market is still in flux, and planning to tighten its belt when the market starts to solidify. Spend now while growth is to be had.

The Netflix Comparison

Since its listing, Spotify has found itself rocketed into the spotlight with no end of financial analysts now setting their sights on the streaming company and making their own estimates for revenues and subscribers. The somewhat predictable dominant narrative is how much Spotify does, or does not, compare to Netflix. Spotify is going to have to get used to those sorts of comparisons. The good news for Spotify is that its first earnings compare well with when Netflix was at similar stage of its growth.

In Q4 2015 Netflix hit 74.8 million total subscribers, up 5.6 million from the previous quarter. Streaming revenues were up 6% to $1.7 billion while cost of revenues were at 70% of revenues and quarterly premium ARPU was $22.37. Over the course of the next 12 months Netflix would add 19 million subscribers to reach 93.8 million by end 2016.

By comparison, in Q1 2018 Spotify hit 75 million total subscribers, up 4 million from the previous quarter. Revenue was up down 1% on previous quarter while cost of revenues were at 75% of revenues and quarterly premium ARPU was €13.80.

It is clear these are snapshots of companies at very similar stages of growth, however Spotify has slightly higher cost of revenue and lower ARPU than Netflix did in Q4 2015, both of which need fixing. The indications are thus that Spotify has a solid chance of following a similar path. Indeed, MIDiA’s estimate for Spotify’s end of year subscriber count is 93 million, putting it on exactly the same growth trajectory as Netflix was in 2016. For now, looking at Netflix’s performance with a 27 months look back is a pretty good proxy for where Spotify is going to be getting to.

Conclusion

Right now, Spotify is trying to strike a Goldilocks positioning: not too disruptive to the traditional music business but not too supportive of it either. Spotify needs to talk out of both sides of its mouth for a while, showing how much value it is delivering to traditional rights holders but also how it is an innovative force for change. The F1 filing leaned more towards the latter position, while the Q1 earnings took a more matter of fact approach. But over time, expect Goldilocks to start trying more of daddy bear’s porridge.

These findings are just a few highlights from MIDiA’s 6 chart Spotify Q1 2018 Earnings report which will be published Thursday 3rdMay. The report includes, alongside core earnings data, proprietary MIDiA metrics such as gross profit per subscriber and gross subscriber adds. If you are not already a MIDiA client and would like to learn how to get access to this report and other Spotify research and metrics, email stephen@midiaresearch.com

Earlier this week the IFPI released its Global Music Report – an essential tool for anyone with a serious interest in the global recorded music business. One interesting trend to emerge was the slowdown in Swedish streaming growth and its knock-on effect on overall recorded music revenues. Sweden has long been the leading indicator for where streaming is likely to head, providing a picture of just how vibrant a sophisticated streaming market can be. But now, with the market reaching saturation, it also gives us some clues as to what the long-term revenue outlook for the global music market could be.

According to the IFPI, Swedish streaming revenues reached $141.3 million in 2017, up from $125.7 million in 2016, with subscriptions accounting for 96% of the total. That was an increase of just $9.3 million, or 7% year-on-year growth, down from 10% in 2016 and 23% in 2015. This is a typical trajectory for a market when it has progressed to the top end of the growth curve. With synchronisationand performance revenues collectively growing by just $1.5 million in 2017 and downloads and physical both continuing their long-term decline, streaming is not only the beating heart of Swedish music revenues, it is the only driver of growth. Consequently, overall Swedish recorded music revenues grew by just 4% in 2017, compared to 6% in 2016 and 10% in 2015. As streaming matures, total market growth slows.

So what can we extrapolate from Sweden onto the global market? Firstly, there are a number of unique market characteristics to be considered:

Sweden is the home of Spotify, so adoption over indexes

Incumbent telco Telia provided a lot of early stage growth for Spotify

iTunes never really got going in Sweden, so the legacy download market was a much smaller part of the market than it is globally

Physical music sales are further along in their decline (now just 10% of all revenues)

These factors considered imply that Sweden is an indicator of an optimum state streaming market; others may not get there or will not get there so quickly. This could mean that legacy formats decline more quickly in comparison, making total revenue growth slower. However, given that downloads are a bigger chunk of revenues in most markets, these factors should cancel each other out. Therefore, an annual growth of 4% in total music revenues is a decent benchmark for long-term revenue growth.

The question is, what happens to the remnants of declining legacy format revenue? Do those CD and download buyers disappear out of the market, or does some of their revenue switch over to ensure that growth continues further? The likelihood is that Apple will see much of its longer-term growth come from converting higher value iTunes customers into subscribers, but there is a clear case for expanding the market beyond 9.99. The current 10% price hike experiment Spotify is running in Norway is one route. But, a suite of higher tier products is a better solution, as are super-cheap low-end products (e.g. $0.25 a week for Today’s Top Hits) and, of course, boosting ad-supported revenue to steal audience from radio. That latter point is probably the best long-term option for pushing real continual recorded music industry growth.

Today the IFPI released its estimates for global recorded music revenues in 2017. That figure was $17.3 billion representing an 8.9% growth on the $15.7 billion it reported last year. The numbers are bang in line with the numbers MIDiA reported last week ($17.4 billion / 8.5% growth – see here for more) and reflect a year of fantastic growth. The headlines are:

Streaming is the fuel in the engine: Streaming revenues were up 37% to hit $6. Billion (this however underrepresents the value of the market as the IFPI groups Pandora under ‘mobile personalization and other’ wiping out the best part of a billion dollars of streaming revenue). MIDiA’s broader definition of streaming puts 2017 revenues at $7.4 billion. Whichever definition you go with, the narrative is clear: streaming is dragging the entire recorded music industry back into growth (all other sales formats are in decline). The recorded music industry is on track to become a streaming industry in all but name.

Legacy format decline is slowing:Physical and download sales fell at a slower rate in 2017 than they did in 2016. This, in turn enabled streaming growth to have a bigger impact on overall revenue growth. The legacy formats will decline steadily now until the channel stops stocking them. The first big step will be when Apple turns off the iTunes Music Store. This is something we predicted back in 2015, forecasting that it would happen by 2020. That bet is still looking good.

UMG still leads the pack: As major label revenues are a matter of public record via company reports we can calculate 2017 market shares against IFPI 2017 total. UMG comes in at 29.8%, Sony 22.2%, WMG 18.0%, Indies 27.7% and artists direct 2.7%. These numbers are all within a 10thof a percentage point of the results MIDiA published last week. As we reported then, the key takeaways are that UMG still leads the pack, WMG has grown faster than the other majors while artists direct were the single biggest growth driver in 2017. (Note it appears that artists direct now appear in the IFPI numbers though the $100 million difference between IFPI’s and MIDiA’s numbers mean that has come off either the artist direct or indie numbers)

All in all, a stellar year for recorded music revenues, with plenty of growth yet to come, especially as emerging markets start to deliver at scale.

2017 was a stellar year for the recorded music business. Global recorded music revenues reached $17.4 billion in 2017 in trade values, up from $16 billion in 2016, an annual growth rate of 8.5%. That $1.4 billion of growth puts the global total just below 2008 levels ($17.7 billion) meaning that the decline wrought through much of the last 10 years has been expunged. The recorded music business is locked firmly in growth mode, following nearly $1 billion growth in 2016.

Streaming has, unsurprisingly, been the driver of growth, growing revenues by 39% year-on-year, adding $2.1 billion to reach $7.4 billion, representing 43% of all revenues. The growth was comfortably larger than the $783 million / -10% that legacy formats (ie downloads and physical) collectively declined by.

Universal Music retained its market leadership position in 2017 with revenues of $5,162 million, representing 29.7% of all revenues, followed by Sony Music ($3,635 million / 22.1%) while Warner Music enjoyed the biggest revenue growth rate and market share shift, reaching $3,127 million / 18%. Meanwhile independents delivered $4,798 million representing 27.6%. However, much additional independent sector growth was absorbed by revenue that flowed through digital distribution companies owned by major record labels that were thus reported in major label accounts.

But perhaps the biggest story of all is the growth of artists without labels. With 27.2% year-on-year growth this was the fastest growing segment in 2017. This comprises the revenue artists generate by distributing directly via platforms such as Believe Digital’s Tunecore, CD Baby and Bandcamp. All these companies performed strongly in 2017, collectively generating $472 million of revenue in 2017, up from $371 million the year before. While these numbers neither represent the death of labels nor the return of the long tail, they do reflect the fact that there is a global marketplace for artists, which fall just outside of record label’s remits.

Up until now, this section of the market has been left out of measures of the global recorded music market. With nearly half a billion dollars of revenue in 2017 and growing far faster than the traditional companies, this sector is simply too large to ignore anymore. Artists direct are quite simply now an integral component of the recorded music market and their influence will only increase. In fact, independent labels and artists direct together represent 30.3% of global recorded music revenues in 2017.

A Growing and Diversified Market

The big take away from 2017 is that the market is becoming increasingly diversified, with artists direct far outgrowing the rest of the market. Although this does not mean that the labels are about to be usurped, it does signify – especially when major distributed independent label revenue and label services deals are considered – an increasingly diversified market. Add the possibility of streaming services signing artists themselves and doing direct deals with independent labels, and the picture becomes even more interesting.

The outlook for global recorded music business is one of both growth and change.

The word on the street is that the deals labels have struck with Facebook for its forthcoming music service have been done on a blanket license basis (i.e. a flat fee) with no reporting. This was reported by Music Business Worldwideand has been confirmed to me by various well-placed third parties:

“One controversial element of these agreements is, we hear, that these are ‘blind’ checks: effectively, advances that are not tied to any kind of usage reports from Facebook.”

Now to be clear, this has not been confirmed by either the labels concerned nor by Facebook but, if true, it has potentially dramatic implications, and not where you would necessarily think.

Facebook will bring something highly differentiated to streaming

Facebook is obviously in legislative cross hairs right now because it has proven unable to keep sufficient tabs on user data. The reason reportedly given for the lack of reporting is that Facebook does not yet have the reporting technology in place to track and report on music consumption. Now, there is no doubt that music rights reporting is no small undertaking; it requires expensively constructed systems to manage complex frameworks of rights. Given that Facebook is likely to launch something that more closely resembles Musical.ly and Flipagram (e.g. sound tracking, messaging, social interaction and photo albums) than it does Spotify, the odds are that this proposition will be particularly complex from a reporting perspective. But, and it is a crucial ‘but’, this challenge of tracking, enforcing and reporting on music-integrated user-generated content (UGC) is exactly the same challenge YouTube has been grappling with for years.

Facebook will become the new big player in UGC music

As we all know, YouTube’s relationship with music rights holders (labels in particular) has been fraught with conflict, tension and disagreement. The recorded music industry remains committed to rolling back much of the ‘fair use’ rules under which YouTube operates, to ensure that it can be licensed more like the standard music services. And it appears that genuine legislative progress has been made with big announcements mooted for later this year.

However, if I was part of YouTube’s lobbying team right now I’d be thinking I’ve just been given a free pass. The crux of the industry’s argument is that YouTube does not sufficiently protect copyright, enforce policing nor pay enough. Not paying enough is not directly a legislative issue, but instead a commercial factor. But the labels argue that the unique ‘fair use’ basis on which YouTube operates enables is to pay too little.

If the assumed basic premise of this deal is indeed correct, it transforms in an instant, YouTube from wild west desperado into the closest thing global scale UGC music has to a sheriff. YouTube’s Content ID system is more than 99% accurate at tracking and reporting on consumption. There is so much music on YouTube because in large part the labels need YouTube as a marketing platform. In fact, labels spend more on YouTube marketing than any other digital channel except social.

Fair use lobby efforts may be impacted

Meanwhile Facebook’s position on reporting, according to Music Business Worldwide, is:

“the social media service has committed to building a system which will be able to provide such usage reports – and therefore royalty reports – in the future.”

The deal as a whole could result in three potential legislative outcomes:

Proposed regulations are rethought

Proposed regulations are put on ice

Proposed regulations are implemented but applied equally to Facebook too

The latter is a possibility, but the complication is that the labels – and again this is if the suggested deal structure is correct – have chosen to enable Facebook to behave in many of the exact ways which they do not want YouTube to operate.

Of course, there are good reasons this deal has happened, not least that Facebook will make a massive contribution to the digital music space in a truly different way. But perhaps more importantly in this context, Facebook will have paid enough to make the labels do a 180 degree turn on their approach to UGC. Therein lies the heart of the YouTube problem. Rights holders want to get paid more, and lobbying for legislative change is seen as the only way to make that happen. But some of the fundamentals that underpin that change are potentially put into question by the Facebook deals. So, there is a chance that in their efforts to get more revenue from Facebook, the labels might just have compromised their ability to get even more revenue in the long term from YouTube.

Arguably the most anticipated day in the history of digital music is upon us. By the end of it we will have the first hint at whether Spotify is going to fall at the Snap Inc. or Facebook end of the spectrum of promising tech IPO, or DPO in the case of Spotify. Of course, we’ll need a few quarters’ worth of earnings in place before firmer conclusions can be drawn as to the strength of Spotify as a publicly traded company, but the first 24 hours will lay down some markers. However, it is the mid and long-term market factors that will give us the best sense of where Spotify can get to. Here are a few pieces of pertinent market context that can help us understand where Spotify is heading:

Streaming is just getting going: Downloads are yesterday’s legacy market, streaming is the future. But streaming has a long way yet to go. To date, downloads have generated around $35 billion in revenue for labels since the market started. That compares to around $15 billion for subscriptions. Apple accounted for around $23 billion of that download revenue, Spotify accounted for around $5 billion of that subscription revenue.

Spotify retains leadership: While the streaming market is competitive, Spotify has retained around 36% subscriber market share. However fast the market has grown, Spotify has either matched or beaten it. Apple is growing fast too but is adding fewer net new subscribers per quarter than Spotify is. Fast forward 12 months from now, Spotify will still be the number one player. Fast forward 24 months, it will probably still be.

Tech majors want the same thing: Of all the big streaming services, only Spotify is truly independent. Apple Music – Apple, Amazon Prime Music – Amazon, YouTube – Google, QQ Music – Tencent, Deezer – Access Industries, MelON – Kakao Corp, and now, Facebook) all have parent companies that have ulterior business objectives with music streaming. None of them have to seriously worry about streaming generating an operating profit. This means that there is little pressure in the marketplace to drive down label rights costs. All of this means that Spotify is the only main streaming service that is trying to make the model commercially sustainable.

Spotify can’t be Netflix yet: As much as the whole world appears to be saying Spotify needs to do a Netflix (and it probably does) it just can’t, not yet at least. In TV, rights are so fragmented that Netflix can have Disney and Fox pull their content and it still be a fast growing business. If UMG pulled its content from Spotify, the latter would be dead in the water. So, Spotify will take a subtler path to ‘doing a Netflix’, first by ‘doing a Soundcloud’ i.e. becoming a direct platform for artists and then switching on monetisation etc. In the near-term Spotify will happily have record labels sign artists that bubble up on the platform. But over time, expect Spotify to start competing for some signings.

Unpicking the distribution lock: The major record labels represent around 80% of recorded music revenues globally on a distribution basis, but just 61% on a copyright ownership basis. They get the extra market share through the distribution they provide indies, either directly or via divisions like Sony’s The Orchard or WMG’s ADA. The 80% share gives the majors the equivalent of a UN Security Council veto. Nothing gets through without their approval, which acts as a brake on Spotify’s ambitions. But, if Spotify was to persuade large numbers of those indies distributing through majors to deal direct, then some of that major power will be unpicked, which, combined with increased revenue, subscribers and market share, would strengthen Spotify’s hand.

Right now, Spotify has soft power (playlist curation, user-level data, subscriber relationships etc.). Spotify’s long-term future will depend on it building out its hard power and bringing it to bear in a way that brings positives both for it and for its industry partners. That will be a tightrope act of the highest order.

If you want the inside track on Spotify’s metrics, get access to MIDiA’s latest report:

One of the core values that we deliver to our clients at MIDiA Research is finding the ‘third number’— the data point that wasn’t reported by a company but that can be arrived at through a process of modelling and triangulation. Next week, we will publish a report that does just this for the numbers presented in Spotify’s F1 filing. The metrics we arrive at help create a more complete picture of Spotify’s performance for investors and rights holders, as well as the impact of core metrics upon other parts of Spotify’s business. In advance of its publication, here are just a few highlights.

Spotify’s F1 filing paints a picture of a growing business that is improving metrics across the board, with the foundations for a solid couple of years ahead now well built. But there are also a number of challenges:

User growth: Spotify experienced strong growth between Q4 2015 and Q4 2017, increasing its subscriber base from 28 million to 71 million, its ad supported users from 64 million to 92 million and its total monthly active users (MAUs) from 91 million to 159 million. Set in the longer-term context, Spotify’s subscriber growth trajectory indicates it is well up the growth curve, with 2014 representing the earlier growth phase and Q1 2015 the point at which the inflection point occurred. Since Apple Music entered the market in mid 2015, Spotify has seen growth actually increase, and over the period added more net new subscribers by the end of 2017 (49 million) than Apple Music did (34 million).

Streams up, but inactive subscribers also: Engagement is growing, with subscribers playing an average of 630 streams a month in 2017 compared to 438 in 2015. Over the same period ad supported users increased average monthly streams from 119 to 222. The net result was 195.4 billion streams in 2017 compared to 59.6 billion in 2015. However, inactive subscribers (i.e. subscribers plus ad supported users minus MAU) grew from one million in Q1 2016 to four million in Q4 2017. Though this is a long way off the ‘zombie users’ problem that Deezer has historically suffered from due to inactive telco bundles, it is a metric Spotify will need to keep on top of.

Churn down…: Throughout 2016 and 2017 Spotify progressively reduced its churn rate from 6.9% for Q1 2016 to 5.7% in Q4 2017. This is despite churn being pushed up by the super trials and thus reflects a solid improvement of organic retention across Spotify’s paid user base. In a March investor presentation, CFO Barry McCarthy argued that as Spotify’s subscriber base matures, life time value (LTV) and gross profit will increase, with more subscribers sticking around for longer.

…but not out: Despite quarterly falls, churn remains a core issue while Spotify is in growth phase and is acquiring portions of subscribers who try out the service but realise it is not for them. On an annual basis churn 18% in 2017, down from 18.5% in 2016. These lost subscribers totalled 12.8 million in 2017, up from 8.9 million one year earlier. Spotify added 23 million subscribers to its year-end total in 2017 but, including churned out subscriber the total subscribers gained was 35.8 million. Thus, churned subscribers accounted for 36% of all subscribers gained. This process of getting more subscribers in than out is common to all premium subscription businesses and is particularly pronounced when a service is in growth phase, as is the case with Spotify. It is even more pronounced in contract-free subscriptions. Pay-TV and mobile companies have the benefit of long-term contracts to minimise churn. The fact that Spotify reports churn at all is creditable. McCarthy’s old company Netflix got so fed up with investors’ reactions to churn that it stopped reporting it all together.

Super trials: Spotify’s subscriber growth has not however been linear. Heavily discounted trials offering three-month subscriptions for $1 have been pivotal in driving strong user growth spikes each quarter in which they run. On average, Spotify’s global subscriber base grew by a net total of 2.8 million each quarter between Q4 2015 and Q4 2017 in the quarters that these ‘super trials’ were not running, but by 7.5 million in the quarters that they did.

Non-linear growth affects all regions: In 2016 and 2017, Spotify’s European and North American subscriber bases each grew at an average of one million subscribers in quarters without trials and three million and two million respectively in quarters with them. Thus, Spotify’s organic net monthly subscriber growth in each of these regions was around 330,000. A similar trend appeared in Latin America – where net subscriber growth doubled in each trial quarter from one to two million. The impact is more dramatic in rest of world, where rounded net subscriber growth was flat in all quarters without trials and more than one million in quarters with.

Despite the joint effects of subscriber bill shock and reduced margins, super trials are clearly net positive for Spotify’s business. When it later decides to fade them out in more mature markets – namely when it switches from user acquisition to user retention mode – Spotify will be able to quickly improve both margin and retention.

Barring calamity, Spotify looks set to have a strong 2018 in terms of growth across subscriptions, MAUs and revenue. If it continues its current operating strategy Spotify should reach 93 million subscribers by the end of 2018. By comparison, Apple Music is likely to have hit around 56 million subscribers by Q4 2018, with its rate of net new monthly subscribers having increased to 2 million in 2018.

If you are not yet a MIDiA subscription client and would like to find out how to get a copy of the forthcoming seven-slide report and accompanying dataset, email stephen@midiaresearch.com

Spotify just filed its F1 for its DPO. The most anticipated business event in the recorded music industry since, well…as long as most can remember, is one big step closer. The filing is a treasure trove of data and metrics, and while there won’t be too many surprises to anyone who follows the company closely, there are none the less a lot of very interesting findings and themes. The full filing can be found here. Here are some of the key points of interest:

Most of the numbers are heading in the right direction: MAUs, subscribers, hours spent etc are all going up while churn and cost ratios are heading down. Premium ARPU was an exception, declining: 2015 – €7.06 / 2016 – €6.00 / 2017 €5.24, which reflects pricing promotions. But Spotify was never going to have fixed every aspect of its business in time for its listing, that was never the point. What Spotify needs to convince potential shareholders is that it is heading in the right direction. The narrative that emerges here is of a company that has helped create an entire marketplace, that has made great ground so far and that is poised for even bigger and better things. That narrative and the clear momentum should be enough to see Spotify through. As I’ve previously noted, investor demand currently exceeds supply. If you are a big institutional investor wanting to get into music, there are few options. Pandora aside, this is pretty much the only big music tech stock in town. As long as Spotify can keep these metrics heading in the right direction, it should have a much smoother first few quarters than Snap Inc did, even though a profit is unlikely to materialise in that time.

Spotify is baring its metrics soul: Spotify has put a lot of metrics on the line, setting the bar for future SEC filings. While competitor streaming services will be busy plugging the numbers into Excel so they can compare with their own, the rest of the marketplace now has a much clearer sense of what running a streaming service entails. One really encouraging development is Spotify’s introduction of Daily Active User (DAU) metrics. As we have long argued at MIDiA, monthly numbers are an anachronism in the digital era, a measure of reach not engagement. So, Spotify is to be applauded for being the first major streaming service to start showing true engagement metrics.

Users and engagement are lifting: Spotify had 159 million MAUs in 2017, with 71 million paid and 92 million ad supported. Europe was the biggest region (58 million total MAUs) followed by North America (52 million), Latin America (33 million) and Rest of Word (17 million). The latter two are the fastest growing regions. Meanwhile, 44% of MAUs are DAUs, up from 37% in Q1 2015, which shows that users are becoming more engaged, though the shape of the curve (see chart below) shows that when swathes of new users are on-boarded, engagement can be dented. Consumption is also growing (a sign of both user growth and increased engagement): quarterly content hours went from 17.4 billion in 2015 to 40.3 billion in 2017. There are some oddities too. For example, ad supported MAUs actually declined in Q2 2017 by 1 million on Q1 2017 and in Q4 2017 only increased by 1 million on the previous quarter to reach 92 million.

The future of radio: Spotify puts a big focus on spoken word content and podcasts in the filing, as it does on advertiser products. It also lists radio companies first and subscription companies second as its key competitors. Meanwhile ad supported flicked into generating a gross profit in 2017 (ad supported went from -12% gross margin in 2016 to 10% in 2017. Premium gross margin up from 16% to 22% over same period.) As MIDiA predicted last year, free is going to be a big focus of Spotify in 2018 and beyond. The first chapter of Spotify’s story was about becoming the future of retail. The next will be about becoming the future of radio. And the increased focus on spoken word is not only about stealing radio’s clothes, it is about creating higher margin content than music. None of this is to say that Spotify will necessarily execute well, but this is the strategy nonetheless.

Spotify is still losing money but is trending in the right direction: Spotify’s cost of revenue in 2017 was €3,241 million against revenue of €4,090 with an operating loss of €378 million. However, losses are not growing much (€336 in 2016) and financing its debt added a whopping €974 million in 2017, from €336 million in 2016. Part of the purpose of the DPO is to ensure debt holders, investors and of course founders and employees get to see a return of their respective investments in money and blood, sweat and tears. Once that is done, financing costs will normalize. Also, Spotify’s new label licensing deals are kicking in, with costs of revenue as a share of premium revenue falling from 84% in 2016 to 78% in 2017. Spotify is not yet profitable but it is getting its house in order.

All in all, there is enough in this filing to both convince potential investors to make the bet while also providing enough fodder for critics to throw doubt on the commercial sustainability of streaming. Spotify’s structural challenge is that none of the other big streaming services have to worry about turning a profit. In fact, it is in their collective interest to keep market costs high to make it harder for their number one competitor to prosper.

But in the realms of what Spotify can impact itself, the overriding trend in this filing is that Spotify is well and truly on the right track. For now, and the next 9 months or so, Spotify will likely remain the darling of the sector. But after that, investors will start wanting a lot more if they are going to keep holding the stock. Spotify is promising that the best days are yet to come. Now it needs to deliver.

Tencent is building a global streaming empire. Back in December 2017 Tencent Music did a 10% equity swap deal with Spotify and now it has led a $115 million investment round for India-based streaming service Gaana. India may only be a small subscription market, with just 1.1 million paid subscribers at the end of 2016, but it one dominated by local players and has massive free streaming potential. Tencent now has major streaming stakes that give it reach across Asia, Europe and the Americas. The key missing parts are the Middle East and North Africa (Anghami is probably waiting for the phone to ring). Right now, Tencent has a streaming foothold in the world’s three largest countries:

China: population 1.4 billion. 100% ownership of QQ Music, Kugou and Kuwo which together account for 70% of subscribers

India: population 1.3 billion. Undisclosed ownership of top three streaming service Gaana

US: 330 million. 10% ownership of leading subscription service

What Tencent is doing is building a global network of strategic positions in the streaming market that individually might not have global influence, but, collectively could be brought to bear to in an impactful way. Much like John Malone’s Liberty Media, Tencent is taking minority stakes in a strategically selected portfolio of companies. This provides it with the ability to exert some degree of influence and extract some benefit without the risk and resource required for a majority ownership. Minority stakes can also be used as beachheads for majority ownership further down the line.

In some respects, Tencent does not have a huge amount of choice in the matter. Last year the Chinese government placed restrictions on the amount Chinese companies could spend on overseas companies, in order to slow the outflow of capital from China. But, rather than let this be a hindrance Tencent is now using the policy to shape a bold internationalisation strategy. Coupled with other minority investments (12% in Snap Inc., 5% of Tesla) Tencent is positioning itself to be king maker in the future of digital media.